Courtney Ludwick
​

If I Was a Psychic on a Blue Velvet Couch

At the end of summer, your mother will cheat on your father. You will not know if she has
cheated before. You will not know if she has cheated with other men, in other places, when your
father was living in a submarine or on a ship, or if there is more to the story. You will not know
many things, but you will listen as your father and sister tell you this over the phone. When they
hang up, you will skip the workshop class you have later in the day with the middle-aged
professor you have a crush on, and you will finish off a six-pack of your favorite beer, and you
will sleep for two days straight after.
            But, before you do any of this, you will keep listening, confused when they keep talking.
You will wonder what more there is to say. You will cuss under your breath, wonder why they
had to say anything at all. And you will be even more confused when they tell you that your
mother has been arrested for what the newspapers will later call “terroristic threat of
family/household,” what your boyfriend’s family will call bad parenting, what your friends, for
fear of upsetting you, will not call anything.
            ​You will think your father is joking when he tells you that your mother tried to burn the
house down with your sister and her fiancé inside of it, after they found out she was cheating on
him. And, before you can stop yourself, you will laugh out loud, because you can really do
nothing else.
            You will think the entire phone call insane. You will imagine the red brick house on the
corner of the street up in flames. You will imagine your old bedroom, still there like a bad shrine,
gone, because of your kerosene mother. You will laugh, until you realize no one else is and you
probably shouldn’t be either.
            At this point, your sister’s voice will stall, her eyes probably full of tears, and you will
have a panic attack. This one won’t last long and your breathing will slow and you will pinch the
insides of your thighs as your sister tells you exactly what happened, tells you how she had no
other choice but to call the police and have your mother arrested. Later, she will also tell you that
she begged the cops to let your mother go, to call a psychiatrist, to call someone who might
actually help, because something similar has happened before.
            And you will have so many questions. You will still not know so many things. But for the
very first time, you will not feel like a child left in the dark or talking to trees.
            Soon enough, your sister will say goodbye. You will ask your father if he’s okay, and
then listen to him lie yes. After they hang up, you will have another panic attack, a longer one
this time. And, after that, you will think back to your childhood, to the fights you had with your
mother once you started to grow up. You will think about the weeks when she was gone, and
about the weeks when she wasn’t—but was. You will remember the times where her face twisted
up and her voice became guttural, inhuman, not the mother you knew. You will think back to all
of this, and you will stop laughing. You will think back to all of this and know that this was
coming for a long time, probably. You will get drunk and skip class and get high and sleep for
two days straight after.
                                                                                    ✕
In a month or so, you will visit home for the first time in a long time. Your sister will be visiting
too, and you will see her blonde hair, now dyed a dark brown, a color closer to yours, and you
will think to yourself how much she looks like your mother. You will think how much you both
have started to. You will run up to her and hug her tight. And you will put on terrible movies you
both hate but love to watch together.
            The night will come slow, and you will talk to your older sister about everything, but you
will not talk about how your mother is gone, not yet. You will not talk about the strange empty
hole you feel, and you will not ask her if she feels that same emptiness too. You will not ask her
about that day, or even how it feels being back in the house where you both grew up but where
only she was when it happened. What you will ask is if she wants to look for it online. And,
because you are sisters, she will know exactly what it you are asking her about. You both will
have been waiting to do this. You both will have been waiting for the other to start.
            Once you find your mother’s mugshot, you will wish that you hadn’t. Your sister will
gasp at your mother’s face, blank and pale and strange without makeup. And you will echo her,
you have always echoed her, and you will cover your mouth with your hands to stop any sounds
from coming out, as you take in her thin eyebrows, their angry slant. You will visibly cringe
when you see her eyes, eyes that you would have sworn were green, but will, in that moment,
look black.
            Your father will walk into the room, ask the two of you what you want for dinner, and
your sister will shut the laptop fast. You will cross your fingers and pray under your breath that
he does not see, but he will. He will see his wife’s face on the screen, even as it is closed, and he
will walk out of the room without saying a word. It will be your sister’s turn to laugh then, and
you will hold her hand. She will laugh, and you will know she isn’t really laughing.
                                                                                    ✕
Texas will get cold, colder than it has ever been, colder than you ever remember it getting, and,
in December, you will graduate with two degrees because you didn’t know how to pick just one.
You will walk across the stage when the announcer gets to the L’s, and your family and friends
will yell obnoxiously loud as you try not to laugh. After the ceremony, your mother will find you
in the crowd, come up to you, and hand you a bouquet of sunflowers. You will not say anything
as you take your favorite flowers from her hands, and she will look sad as she walks to her car
alone.
            ​When you take pictures with your grandparents, you will look a little sad too. But then
you will jump in the river where everyone jumps after graduating, and you will forget about
feeling sad. You will jump only after your best friends tell you that you have to and that you’ll
regret it if you don’t. You will jump because you know they’re right. The dress you bought will
end up soaking and only a little see-through, and the two hours you spent on your hair and
makeup will have been for nothing. You will see the video of you jumping in the river after, and
you will not care.
            You will get out of the river only after a stranger helps you climb out. And then your
boyfriend, C, and your best friends will hand you the wilted roses they got from a booth outside
the university arena. The roses will sit in a vase until they turn black and fall to pieces. You will
keep the sunflowers your mother gave you for one day, and then you will give them to your
roommate’s girlfriend.
            Texas will get even colder, but you will be okay. You will buy a warmer jacket. You will
bundle up in scarves and a hat. It will rain in the morning, and you will buy an umbrella to keep
yourself warm and dry. It will snow at night, and you will wear the thickest socks you own. And
you will remember how cold it gets, even when you try your hardest to forget. The days will
grow shorter, and you will sleep even longer.
                                                                                    ✕
There will be a pandemic. Right before this pandemic happens, you will visit New Orleans with
a few friends from high school. You will drive. Or, more accurately, your closest friend from
high school will drive eight hours across state border lines while you sleep in her car’s passenger
seat with a heavy blanket pulled over your head. You will love her that much more for it, though,
and she will be secretly happy you only drive the one time, the one hour, on the last night when
everyone else is drunk, because she knows how bad you really are at driving.
            It will be cold in New Orleans too, but you will borrow her skirt anyway. You will put
your hair in pigtails, and your other friend—the one who slept in the backseat with a blanket
pulled over her head—will paint glitter over your face, over your arms, over your goosebump
legs. If there is a part of your body that is visible, she will paint glitter over it. She will also paint
glitter over some of your not-so-visible parts. But you will be glad she does this too, mainly
because you are the one friend who will flash the white-haired men and college-aged guys for
plastic beads they probably would have thrown to you and your friends anyway. You will laugh,
not quite drunk, as they shout at your naked chest.
            On the first night there, your friend—your backseat friend, not your driving friend—will
want to stop on a dimly lit street corner in front of a greasy fold-up chair and white plastic table
to have her palm read. Your other friend—the driving friend, this time—will look uneasy when
she tells you both how these people are scammers, and how their tricks are fake as her nails.
After a few minutes, the three of you will decide to cough up twenty bucks each anyway.
            Somehow, you will end up first in line, looking more nervous than anyone should, and
shuffling your feet around in front of an aging woman—a self-proclaimed psychic—who will
have more purple hair than gray, and a gold tooth where her left canine would have been. She
will call you honey and tell you to sit down in a drawl much too hushed for a woman with a
stolen shopping cart filled with plastic crystals and (plastic?) skulls. And you will listen, before
asking her how this all works, as if you are the type of person who would believe any answers
she might give.
            She will take the two folded bills from your left hand and grab ahold of your right. Your
eyes will meet hers when she says, “Like this.”
            Without even looking at the lines and scars and freckles on your palm, her eyes will
suddenly close. Her grip on you will tighten. Your friends will still be behind you, now laughing
at her banana yellow eyeshadow, but you will be the one her fingernails dig into. You will not
laugh when you hear their jokes because you will see the same sad orange lipstick, but also the
quiver of her top lip, the flutter underneath her closed lids, and instead start to think, what if this
is real?
            A few seconds will pass before she says anything. And when she does speak, you will
wish you would’ve just laughed and made fun of her too. You will be silent, still, as she tells you
that your mother is in trouble, that your sister has been stressed, that your father has found out
something bad, that you are needed back home. Your friends will go quiet then too, and you will
pretend not to have heard whatever bullshit the batshit psychic has said. You will move your
hand away, too fast and almost rude.
            She will wave for the next person in line, for your friend to come forward, and you will
fake listen, fake laugh, fake a forced smile, at her happy predictions. You will rub your palm
until the crescent-shaped marks from her hard nails turn pink and then gone.
                                                                                    ✕
Time will feel weird. And you will spend your days back in your old bedroom, sleeping where
you haven’t slept in ages. By now, you will have gotten used to sleeping all day, staying up only
once the sky turns dark. You will sleep and you will wake and you will stop caring about
whether you’re dreaming or not. It will all feel the same for a little while.
                                                                                    ✕
Your twenty-second birthday will pass, and you will get ready to move to a new city for more
school. A few days before you and your father make the seven-hour-long drive west, your
mother will call. You will hit accept, because you will feel bad about all the other times when
you hit decline. But when you answer, you will say hello like you are really saying leave me
alone. In a voice both hopeful and strained, she will ask if she can stop by.
            When she walks through the door without knocking first, your throat will feel like it is
closing, your mouth will feel dry, and your words will feel clumsy and rushed as you say hello.
Her smile will look awkward too, not quite right, not quite as you remember it, and you will
wonder if you are hallucinating when one corner of her mouth begins to sag lower than the other.
She will be wearing a tight shirt. Her midriff will be showing. Her dark pants will be loose
around her waist, taut and stretched everywhere else. She will be thin, thinner than before, and
she will still be pretty, she has always been pretty, she is prettiest in your memories and the old
photographs you lie about keeping, but you will miss the before.
            You will not remember exactly what she says—she will not stay long because your words
will be cold—but you will remember how she stands to leave. Slowly, as if you will forgive her.
Carefully, as if you might bite. Her black eyeliner will have gone all smudged, and her maroon
lipstick never did stay in the lines. Underneath her dark makeup and fake-tan skin, she will look
tired. She will lean in for a hug and her arms will stretch out and you will try to remember if she
has always looked like a puppet on a string. You will not hug her, and she will flinch. You will
ignore how frail she looks when she says goodbye twice, the same way she does on the phone.
                                                                                    ✕
And then you and your father will make the seven-hour-long drive west. The apartment you
should have visited before signing the lease will be nice enough, but the air will be drier than
you’re used to.
            You will try to call C to tell him about the dry air, but he will not answer. The call will go
straight to his voicemail, and you will listen to the whole thing, his boyish voice sounding
different and the same, recorded back before you two even knew each other. You will think
about calling your mother before calling your sister instead.
            Your father will stay just long enough to help you get settled in. He’ll tell you that his
back hurts, and he’ll tell you to get off the phone and help him carry your coffee table up the
stairs. You will stub your toe as you do. You will wish you hadn’t moved at all. You will cuss,
loudly.
            As you cradle your toe, your father will tell you not to cuss so loud. You will tell him that
it’s his fault, you got it from him. And he will laugh, ignoring what you said, because he knows
you’re right. Your father will say that you need a new couch, and you will drive to some random
furniture store together to pick one out, because you know he’s right.
            Too soon, he will leave and you will hug him goodbye and your new couch will be blue
velvet. You will text him, let me know when you get home, and he will call seven hours later,
letting you know exactly that. You will want to text your mother back. You will watch a horror
movie with all the lights on. You will need to go to sleep early. But you will stay up late. You
will think about sunflowers and want to cry. You will think about fires and punch the closest
pillow. You will pinch the insides of your thighs and pretend you never stopped sleeping so
many months ago. You will pretend your blue velvet couch does not exist. You will pretend it is
last summer, and you have a crush on your teacher, and you have a six-pack in the fridge that
you will not drink until the weekend.

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Courtney Ludwick is a writer, teacher, and doctoral candidate in Literature and Creative Writing at USD. Her words have appeared in Watershed Review, Oxford Magazine, Milk Carton Press, and elsewhere.